1. Overview

The Range Bar chart is a bar chart that displays bars for each dimension (category), ranging between a start value and an end value. For example, Range Bar charts can be used to represent the beginning and end of operations/tasks along a time axis, similar to a Gantt chart, for tracking project schedule. This article demonstrates a few Range Bar chart configurations that can be used in order to visualize measurement ranges, tasks, and project schedules.

2. Creating a Range Bar chart

A range bar chart has at least two measures (to be used as the start and end of the range bars) and one hierarchy. For example, in the following chart, the measures represent low and high temperatures for a day and work as a range of temperature values.

3. Showing task schedules and dependencies

A project can have multiple phases, such as Planning, Design, Implementation, etc. Each phase can have milestones and dependencies. You can use a Range Bar chart to show these milestones and their dependencies within a project phase.

3.1. Data preparation

The following table is used to create the chart. It has five milestones (M1, M2, etc.) and their timelines from the Design phase of a project. M3 is dependent on M2 and M5 is dependent on M4.

In Dundas BI version 4 and higher, the recommended visualization Range Bar Chart will apply these settings automatically.

Set the scale type for the bottom axis to Date/Time.

For this chart, check the Skip Missing Data under Bottom Axis (Bottom Axis 1) -> Axis -> Intervals in order to show only the dates available in the series.

3.3. Indicating task dependencies

There are multiple ways to indicate dependencies among tasks. A suitable option is to make use of states and creating state styles to indicate dependencies. There must be at least one measure in the metric set to be able to create states. The table is updated accordingly:

As an additional step, you can show connecting lines between tasks to indicate the tasks that are supposed to run in sequence. To do that, navigate to Properties -> Main -> Data Point Series (Series 1) -> Look -> Connecting Lines and set the value to Bridge.

Set the scale type for the bottom axis to Date/Time. For this chart, Skip Missing Data is checked and Interval Method is set to Show Data Point Values under Bottom Axis (Bottom Axis 1) -> Axis -> Intervals in order to show only the dates available in the series.

5. Miscellaneous

5.1. Adding a line to indicate the current date

Often there is a requirement to show a vertical line in the chart to indicate the current date. This is useful to highlight where the project schedule stands. In the example shown above, you can add another metric set to the same chart using the Data Analysis Panel. In the following example, the dimension Now has the current date.

For the newly created series, navigate to the series properties and set the Marker Fill to White and the Marker Shape to Diamond. Now you can see the milestone dates along the project timeline for each project. You can use states and state styles for the point chart to illustrate the status of the milestones (i.e. In-progress, Delayed, Completed, etc.).